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Ubuntu 12.04 To Include Head-Up Display Menus
For the first few years of its existence, it would have been fair to say that Canonical was essentially polishing, packaging and publishing Debian Linux (and Gnome) to create the base Ubuntu desktop, to great acclaim. For the past few years, though, the company has pushed new looks and new applications (cf. Unity and Ubuntu TV), and refused to stick with prettifying existing interfaces. Now, Barence writes with this excerpt from PC Pro: "Ubuntu is set to replace the 30-year-old computer menu system with a 'Head-Up Display' that allows users to simply type or speak menu commands. Instead of hunting through drop-down menus to find application commands, Ubuntu's Head-Up Display lets users type what they want to do into a search box. The system suggests possible commands as the user begins typing – entering 'Rad' would bring up the Radial blur command in the GIMP art package, for example. HUD also uses fuzzy matching and learns from past searches to ensure the correct commands are offered to users. Canonical's Mark Shuttleworth told PC Pro the HUD will make it easier for people to learn new software packages, and migrate from Windows to Linux software without having to relearn menus. The HUD will first appear in Ubuntu 12.04."
I'd rather have them make Unity usable first. We'll see if they are able to do it and we may decide to move forward from that point.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
I've been doing this for years... so much, in fact, that I have no idea where most menu entries are on my Windows and Linux boxes, and I'm sure many don't even have menu entries. My wife can't navigate my desktops.
I hit "F2" and type commands on Gnome/Linux, and hit "r" all the time. It makes me look like a hacker and is really intimidating to inexperienced users watching me.
Expecting the user to know which command they want - especially in Linux where most program names have nothing to do with their functionality - just seems like a very strong turn in the opposite direction that Ubuntu has been taking.
Isn't 12.04 supposed to be the next LTS release? Seems like they've gone far wayward from their original goals if they're introducing such huge new projects into what's supposed to be a stable, reliable release that enterprises can trust. It would be a better idea to introduce it in 12.10, surely?
CheShA: Manchester Breakcore / Drill and Bass Yes I'm a s
has had this for decades. M-x allows you to enter a command by name, with tab completion.
Replacing the 30 year old GUI with the 40 year old CLI*.
(*plus autocomplete, yay)
...sounds good. That is almost the way I work now on windows or linux. On windows I more often than not hit (windows) + R to get the run box and then type the name of the .exe I want to run. On Ubuntu, it is (alt) + (f2) and type a command. I for one hope our Ubuntu overlords pull this off.
Now Mark Shuttleworth is well on his way to being the next Steve Jobs, for good or for bad.
And I've gone back to Debian, which is a huge relief after the crushing disappointments that were the last few version of Ubuntu.
In a year or two I expect Ubuntu to be as "open source" as IOS...
Why are we introducing a dramatically new interface feature for a long-term support (LTS) release?
"For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive - you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same programme."
s/radios/linux/g ; s/listening to/running/
Nearly there. Time to start spinning in your grave, Mr. Adams.
Philip
-- Any sufficiently advanced level of incompetence is indistinguishable from malice
I have to say it... While there have been a lot of issues with Unity and Ubuntu in general I love the fact that Ubuntu dares to try and do genuine innovation.
Let's face it: It's easy to bash something that "sucks", but it requires a lot more courage to risk braking stuff and trying to find genuinely new approaches to existing problems.
.: Max Romantschuk
So the big menu improvement is... a text console! The idea itself is not new (AutoCad and several games use the same principle), but what I find hilarious is that apparently, is targeted for beginners - the same kind of users that usually don't know the name of the option/command/whatever they want to select. In most cases, advanced users don't use the menubar that often, because of... keyboard shortcuts - yes, using the keyboard to select actions from the menu! I guess that improvement will be announced on a next version...
Generally, the "Obligatory XKCD" meme requires that the XKCD in question have some relation to the subject at hand....
"Oh for fuck's sake, where are the preferences?"
*ping*
"Oh, there they are."
Summation 2
There are a lot of comments saying that this is copying the Run command in Windows or Quicksilver for the Mac. It's not. These don't get you to commands within applications, As Shuttleworth says: “It’s all hooked in below the application level.”
Error 001
Security Scan and Virus Detection do not work with your operating system.
I think that anyone who is so intellectually impoverished that they cannot or will not relearn menus really ought not be using a computer, and certainly should not be permitted the privilege of being on the Internet, where they constitute an active, operational menace to everyone else.
As a side note, it should be interesting to study the privacy and security implications of this approach. A careful read of the Ubuntu mailing lists (all of which I'm on) reveals that -- so far -- nobody has put up their hand and pointed out that this "helpful" approach has as one obvious side effect the construction of a resource that's enormously useful to attackers.
Not sure if I like this. If I am new to an app and don't even know the name of a command/action how do I find out what it is, how do I navigate a list of commands/actions to find out ?
OS X Lion has a similar feature, you can search the menu of any application by typing the command in a menu search box. The menu still stays on the screen though. It is actually quite useful, because if a menu item is in a obnoxious place, it becomes more easy to find.
GNU-Linux started as a command based OS, various GUIs were attempted, and now we're back to typing in what we want to do.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
If you don't know about the existence of the command line terminal you likely don't need it anyway.
Unless you heard about a program that you want to install, and you don't want to wait a minute for Ubuntu Software Center to quit spinning its throbber. (I timed it on my Dell Inspiron Mini 1012 running Ubuntu 11.10.) It's so much faster to open a terminal and sudo apt-get install audacity or whatever.
Sounds more like they are taking an existing tech, that was never really promoted, and promoting it, rather than actually producing something new.
If you watch the video, you'll see that they've expanded on the idea. It's not just an app/document finder, it's a functionality finder.
For example, I'm using Firefox right now. Let's say I can't remember how to add a bookmark. I would pop up the HUD box and start typing "bookmark", and just a few letters in I would see something like "Bookmark > Bookmark this page", which I would select.
I can't speak for OSX, but the Windows launcher functionality, while really helpful, does not do that.
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein
I can already do that with kubuntu
So if you are using GIMP in Kubuntu, you can just type "Undo His..." in the desktop's search box and the menu entry for Undo History will come to the forefront? I just tried it for shits and giggles and it don't work. This is very smart on Canonical's part but don't let the Ubuntu-hate grind to a halt on my account.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
No, they are not replacing the Windows 7 start menu. If you are in Chrome on windows and you want to view the "page source", can you start typing that in to the windows 7 search box and the menu entry for it come to the front? Thought not. This is different. Accept it.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
I wish Ubuntu (and the rest of the Linux GUI world) would quit trying to re-invent everything with the user interface, and put some long-term polish on something that already works. Gnome 2 had finally become pretty darned usable when--oops!--you can't use Gnome 2 anymore! You have to use Gnome 3 (where half your stuff doesn't work, doesn't appear in a menu, or is generally very counter-intuitive to access and use in any case), or Unity (which is no better about all that, but also has all of about 1 year of code maturity and bug fixes).
Why, oh WHY can't I just go back to the fully-functional Gnome 2, where the System Menu was in the "System" menu, rather than being a bunch of random junk in the "other" category? Why must I now avoid the upper-left corner of the screen when I want to work with windows I already have open? Why the heck must I now spend time typing AND clicking on stuff, rather than spending the 3 seconds it used to take to open applications (or hitting Alt-F2 and just typing--with command completion)? And sure Compiz and such are pretty, but they're certainly not stable enough to be MANDATORY (in Unity, at least)! My desktop environment must crash at least twice every time I log on, now, and much more than that unless the settings are "just so."
Sometimes, I think that the biggest flaw in "Linux on the Desktop" is that the community is overly enthusiastic about trying new stuff, rather than refining stuff that already works pretty well (but so far, none of it as well as certain proprietary GUIs). Can't we, for once, "KISS?" (Keep It Simple, Stupid)
Caveat: X needs to be replaced. It was really well-suited for typical use-cases of the 1970s.
*sigh*
I'm done. You're now free to flame me for being heretical.
a lot of people would pay a lot of money for a system that operates pretty much like Windows 95 did
If you want Xubuntu, you know where to find it.
-- A happy Ubuntu user who was disappointed by Unity but pleased by sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop
I think "at all" is too strong of a modifier. I can do it now in (and for as long as I can remember) OS X. I'm in Chrome and I press CMD+SHIFT+? and type "bookmark" and it gives me the following actions to perform:
Import Bookmarks...
Always show bookmark bar
Bookmark Manager
Bookmark this page...
Bookmark All tabs..
Followed by various help topics related to bookmarks.
This is standard behavior supported in OS X.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Reading stuff like that is making me happy I left the Linux-on-the-desktop world years ago.
Where is the research showing that menus are bad and the studies proving this new system is better? Everything else is just geeks doing mental masturbation. Unless you have a seizable number of actual user tests, you are a fucking idiot to put a massive change in user interface into production.
Experiments are cool, and needed to move forward. Don't get me wrong. And as someone who is in love with Quicksilver, this is absolutely an interesting approach.
But you are still a fucking idiot if you confuse "interesting idea" with "ready for production just because we've finished the code".
Don't test UI ideas on your users. As long as you do that, Linux will never be ready for the desktop, because non-geek users hate that.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
The search box is for *starting application*. It replaces the Start Menu with a search box.
(You can type "IM" to find GIMP or other image manipulation menu).
Ubuntu's HUD is for the *application's own menu*. It makes the menu searchable.
(While running GIMP, you start typing the name of some effect or filter, and it shows up directly, instead of having to dig through all the menus).
The big advantage is that it makes quickly accessible lot of deeply hidden function.
The dis-advantage is that you need to know that it exist in order to find it.
(So the first time you either need to scan all the hierarchical menu to learn what exist. Or you need to explore a few explorative keyword searches to discover what exists)
The Ribbon interface is also for the application menu. It shows a bunch of icon of the most often used functions instead of hierachical menus.
So it is fair to compare HUD and Ribbon (as both are in-application menu replacement).
The small advantage of ribbons is that it makes a few key function immediately visible (no need to dig menu to find how to do some formating).
The big disadvantage is the visual mess (searching a 2D space for some random function is more difficult than searching a hierarchy) and the limited space (you can't put 200+ function in a ribbon. You can correctly organise 200+ function when using a good hierarchy. And searching 200+ functions with a search box just makes plain fucking sens).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Hmm, I think I disagree a little.
Per your other rants, it's not my duty on *my computer* to "change paradigms" at the whim of pseudo-bored software companies. When they want to fiddle with stuff, I am likely to try to put it back. I put back the classic menus in Excel, I put back the classic flywheel Start menu, etc. Bonus - my plugin gives me the original menus in Excel rather than the horrible new ones. It proves that the code was hidden, not dropped.
I am a fan of low-tek plugins / widgets for stuff like that. So if some feature has a dumb bug in it, maybe try to code a little utility that fixes it! (Or commission someone else to do it.)
Case in point - Windows 7. I like that it has 8 more years of back end middleware so that some more stuff "just works", but I was grumpy with all the little bumps, so I hunted around all the settings and disabled most of the candy. (You know, it's like cotton candy from a fair, it looks all swirly but there's nothing there.)
However, yes, there are limits, if the company totally overhauls the UI, and strips out the original feature code, rather than hiding it, then you might as well use a whole other distro / UI / platform/ etc.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Back in my XP days, I remember I found out I had to change a lot of stuff on users desktops if I wanted to help them. Control panel, not set to "Classic" view, no file extensions, whatever... So, I help them and it leaves their desktop in a foreign state for them, which then results in more support calls. So, I had to put it to my taste, help them, then put it back. A lot of trouble just because I was not using the default myself. That's exactly what I try to avoid these days.
This is also why dynamic menus are a bad idea... (Ala hidden menus in WinXP/Office)
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
I can recommend linux mint.. I switched a while back and the only thing I can't get to work is the multiple x screen option; twinview works.
It is not perfect, but it's good and I believe they have good intentions.
If you could chill the Ubuntu hate for a second, you could see that this not replace the visible menu tree, but adds an additional option.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
I know I love typing on my tablet...the experience is so good that I bought a keyboard to experience it more... I don't understand why an interface designed for tablets is being forced on desktop users. Win8 is doing the same thing. Works the same on all devices isn't a good thing...If the same thing were tried on cars we'd be steering with a rudder or ailerons.
This is getting to be a pet peeve.
I have to support visually impaired users, and users who don't like a lot of change. I've had more than one person who saw the upgrade message in 10.04 and upgraded to 11.(whatever) and managed to not only completely hose all of the "assistive technology" stuff we set up for them, but to add fuel to the fire they couldn't even navigate around the desktop enough to get onto the "log me in to your computer" page.
Even Microsoft hasn't foisted this many major UI changes on their end-users. KNOCK IT THE FUCK OFF.
True. Clicking on the 'Bookmarks' menu is much harder to figure out than that.
The bookmark example was obviously a simplistic example. The point was that this indexes functionality within applications, not just applications and documents.
I like the example in TFS: why the heck is someone too clueless to use menus going to be searching for 'radial blur' in Gimp?
It has nothing to do with being "too clueless to use menus". It has to do with applications that have tons of functionality buried in nested levels of menus. If you know what you want to do, but don't remember which 8th-level sub-menu it's buried in, then why not let the OS find it for you?
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein
I just upgraded to Linux Mint with the Cinnamon Desktop and I love it! Cinnamon is already nearly as good as Gnome 2 was, and it's improving drastically on a near-weekly basis. Everything just works with this distro. For almost a year now I'd been only half-heartedly recommending Linux to friends - now with Linux Mint and Cinnamon, I've resumed fully recommending Linux to anyone and everyone. If you have any hope left for Linux, I highly recommend trying this now. It's a painless install, and a comfortable, familiar and productive interface.
Man, that article you linked is just awful. I'm trying to figure out where in there that I decided that the author is an idiot, and I think it is right about the time that he (you?) listed "double-click on the person's name" in the start menu as one of his steps. Which I think is actually cutting him a huge amount of slack, because he's at that point already derided how difficult it is in Windows 7 to shut down a computer over remote desktop (which is great for those of us who don't like getting calls after-hours because a user accidentally shut down their computer and now can't get back into it), made an incoherent claim that it was "quite clearly a programmer" who thought of this, and then moved on to complaining about moving the location for My Documents taking additional steps despite the fact that it's so uncommon a use case that it probably happens on the order of one per fifty computer lifetimes at best (most users won't know or care where the folder actually resides and never change it, and IT departments that do care for some reason will have an automated system because they won't want to do it manually with the process described on the page).
I don't want to say it goes downhill from there, but it certainly doesn't get a lot better. Don't let web designers design your webpage? Well, I can gather I shouldn't let programmers do it, either, but what does that leave? Either the marketing department or some random asshat from management? Those are frequently the people most responsible for webpages filled with stupid widgets and crappy layouts. Web designers didn't all decide on their own accord to start filling pages with Web 2.0 widgets, they did it because your pointy haired boss and your marketing department demanded it of them. Or is the IT Department of every company now filled with usability experts?
Your use of the word "intellectual" is new to me. I had not previously seen it defined in terms of rote memorization.
Nearly twenty years ago I recall Linux supporters making the same arguments for the CLI and against the GUI. They wanted to preserve "privilege" for the elect. Not so different from Hollywood.
Nice username.
I installed this from the ppa in Ubuntu 12.04 earlier and have been using it off and on all day. Even in this very early version of it, I find it quite useful. The old menus are still there but when I want to access something, I just tap the alt key and start typing. In FIrefox and want to see your history really fast but can't remember the shift+ctrl+h keyboard shortcut? Just tap alt and start typing "hist..." and see your history pop up. Easy and done. Works on every other program and every menu on my machine so far. Really good for Gimp that has rows and rows of menus to dig through for something. This is a very nice feature and I really don't see any downside at all as again, the menus have not been removed you just have this augmented functionality.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
Sorta sounds like some people like the old ways. Isn't the point of icons in a list in case i don't remember the name of what I'm looking for. ... or in what way is it different ( as i have not seen it yet) .
So this is a GUI based command line with command line completion
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
It seems they went out of their way to make things more difficult, to hide as much as possible and make it much more tortuous to do simple things.
That's MS's MO and one of the reasons I avoid Microsoft whenever possible. It's easier to convert (brainwise) from XP to KDE than it is from XP to Win7. I have Win 7 on my newish notebook (I really ought to get off my lazy butt and put Linux on it), and several things are incredible annoyances that are complete downgrades from XP.
Control Panel -- whoever designed Win 7's control panel needs a good swift kick in the ass. What took two clicks in XP takes 7 in 7.
File Manager -- great, now I can't sort files by extension or by time if they're oggs or wavs -- and I have lots and lots of oggs and wavs.
Search -- Christ but they ruined that completely. Search has gone from "pretty bad" to "completely useless."
The more I use that OS the more I hate it.
Free Martian Whores!